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What a week! Wills and Kate got married, the Breakers won the Australasian Basketball League, NATO killed Ghaddafi's son, Trump got roasted by Obama, Syria took out some more of its citizens and the US killed their number one enemy, Osama Bin Laden. Robert Patman is the Professor of International Relations at this fine institution. Georgie Fenwicke talked to him last week about seeing history in the making.
Yesterday, we bore witness to quite an historic occasion with announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden. What do you think the wider global political implications of this will be?
 
Well, I think there are both strategic and political implications. Al Qaeda has been a thorn in the side of the United States since 1993-94, particularly since 9/11. Al Qaeda has lost its founder. I think [Bid Laden] served as a charismatic inspiration to discontented youth who were frustrated by what they saw as blatant injustices, not least in the Middle East. So I think, in strategic terms, that Al Qaeda has had a setback.

 
I think that the United States has made some progress. Of course, the confrontation between the United States and Al Qaeda is not over, as Obama made quite clear. With 2012 looming, I think he will be saying that he refocused national security strategy when he came to office and his fine-tuning of America's position on global terrorism, in contrast to that of President Bush has apparently paid off.
 

Do you think there will be a backlash from Al Qaeda because of the operation in Pakistan?
 
One can't rule it out. But, put it this way, Al Qaeda has been consistently attacking the United States when it can since about 1993. For much of the Nineties, the US weren't even aware that it was on the receiving end of attacks from Al Qaeda. I don't think this will lend fresh urgency to attacks on the US. It might energise them, but it certainly won't change their agenda.
 

Much of the information that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden was attained via America's questionable interrogation methods; do you think this end result will justify further use of such force?
 
I think one of the most interesting aspects of what has happened in the last day or so is a vindication of Obama's decision to try to draw a line in the sand between the policies of his predecessor in the “War on Terror” as Mr Bush called it.
 

Mr Obama has gone for a two-pronged strategy. He has tried to rebuild America's good name, particularly in the Islamic world. He went to Cairo and he also visited Istanbul and made important speeches in these two important Islamic capitals in Egypt and Turkey respectively. He has tried to marginalise groups like Al Qaeda politically. I am not saying that the death of Bin Laden is irrelevant, but that the organisation has been on the slide since Obama came to office. This has been demonstrated by the wider events in the Middle East where you have a series of uprisings – Tunisia, Egypt, now Libya – yet, where is Al Qaeda? It is not participating in the uprising; it is completely side-lined. Young people there are much more fired up by the idea of democracy and social media than the prescription or policies that fundamentalist Islamist groups, like Al Qaeda, are offering.
 

While you are talking about the wider uprisings in the Middle East, why do you think that NATO have decided to go into Libya in particular and not the other nations also experiencing similar social revolutions?
 
I wouldn't yet rule out, in Syria, increased Western support for the protesters, although I admit it doesn't look like increased Western involvement will translate into NATO involvement. I think the reason NATO got involved was because after Egypt, there seemed to be a sense that the revolutionaries or the protesters had the upper hand and the reason NATO got involved was that there was a concern that Ghaddafi would simply use the full machinery of the state including his military capability against defenceless civilians unless military force was used to restrain him.

 
You talked about the already strained relations between Pakistan and the US on Close Up last week; I wondered if you could elaborate on what you said?
 
The relationship is at a very delicate stage. The government of Mr Zardari is particularly fragile and it has to deal with quite a range of militant, extremist groups in its society and that means that sometimes it tries to cut deals and has dialogues with groups that the US believe are opposed to American security. Pakistan has done this for some time and the US has become increasingly frustrated. On the one hand, Pakistan certainly leant its military and strategic operational support, but on the other hand, despite assurances that they were not consciously providing any sanctuary for Al Qaeda leadership, it turns out that this must not have been the case. Bin Laden had been there since 2005, it transpires. There is a feeling, from the American angle, that Pakistan is trying to have its cake and eat it.

 
On a lighter note, what do you think of Donald Trump's chances of winning the Republican candidacy for the 2012 Presidential race?
 
I think Mr Obama must be praying for it. Personally, I don't think his chances are good. He is facing a groundswell of growing criticism from the right that he is becoming ridiculous. I think Mitt Romney may be a more likely candidate. He is a Mormon which may count against him. But then again, America didn't have a Catholic president before John F. Kennedy and before Barack Obama they had had no African American [president]. Romney is wealthy, more wealthy than Trump. I would say that Trump is becoming more of a media buffoon. But that is just my personal opinion; my crystal ball is as good as any other.